Are you sure you want to discard this trope?

Camping Episode

A group of characters go camping for one episode.

Name Space:Main

Page Type:Trope

Spending time outdoors, walking, breathing fresh air, making food on a portable stove, sleeping under the sky—all in order to relax or have fun. Camping is interpreted widely here. Sleeping outdoors definitely counts, even in a garden, but a full-day hike also qualifies, especially if one prepares food and cooks outdoors. Tents aren't required either, boats can also qualify, or going to austere cabins.

In fiction, it can be used to provide an easy change of tempo or environment, and it also gives a strong backdrop for interpersonal dynamics, as the characters have to work together more closely in an often unfamiliar way. The goal of the characters to have fun or relax also makes it easy to set up and knock down expectations.

A Camping Episode is used to keep the story and the characters fresh by changing the circumstances for the characters, and having an excuse for them to grow. Other types of isolated stories within a work like single issues in a comic or a movie sequel that has the characters leave their usual setting to go camping would also be Camping Episodes. Because of the nature of this trope, you'll generally only see a work use a Camping Episode once or twice.

Examples:

This was the focus of Episode 4 of the Little Lulu anime, where Lulu and Tubby and the rest of their friends are on a camping trip, where they are to take part in an endurance test.

Comics

Calvin and Hobbes usually had Calvin's family go on a camping trip every summer. Calvin never cared for these trips, though his father thought they were a great way to "build character." In the early years of the comic, Calvin would occasionally go on camping trips with a boy scout troop. Bill Watterson discontinued those (and replaced them with the family camping trip storylines) when he realized that Calvin would never willingly join the scouts.

Live-Action TV

An episode of Project Runway had the contestants go "glamping" in the woods (in other words, the prissy clothing designer version of camping).

The Bradys camp out in S1E8—A Camping We Will Go where the girls had little camping experience, and the boys essentially made fun of them.

When camping in the Grand Canyon in Season 3, Bobby and Cindy got lost in the canyon; they were found by a resident Native American boy they befriended.

Bobby & Cindy camp out in the backyard hoping to see an alien.

The Season Five finale of Sanford and Son has Fred and Lamont camping up in the mountains, which Lamont hopes will bond him and Fred before he gets married and leaves home.

An episode of Eureka has the men all go on a camping trip. This being Eureka, there are tents with AIs, gadgets to start fires, and they wind up being chased by a robotic spider. All in all, an average day in Eureka.

Silver Spoons: Ricky and his father & grandfather all go hunting (which is essentially "camping but with guns") as a bonding experience. Ricky enjoys it until he has to shoot a deer. Even after that, he says that he liked all the rest of it and that is what he'll remember. It is the first time we see the father & grandfather get along and enjoy each other's company.

In That '70s Show, the gang all decide to go camping before graduation. Their hijinks during the trip causes them to actually miss graduation.

In the Rugrats episode, "The Legend of Satchmo", Grandpa Lou and the children camp out in the Pickles' backyard. Stu, who had a bad camping experience as a kid, worries about them the entire time.

An episode of X-Men: Evolution had the main characters going on a survival weekend camping trip where they competed against The Brotherhood. The X-Men had the option of staying home and doing survival training with Wolverine, and gleefully jumped at the (inevitably less painful) camping option.

Hey Arnold!: In the episode Roughin it Arnold's Grandpa takes Arnold and Gerald on a weekend camping trip, to bond and to teach basic survival. At the site they find Helga, Pheobe and Helga's dad, who are also roughin it in a high-tech RV. When everyone goes hiking on a mountain trail they get lost in the woods, and Arnold and Gerald have to use the survival skills Arnold's Grandpa taught them to help everyone else find their way back to camp.

Beverly Hills Teens has two episodes. The first time, Bianca brings Lots of Luggage, the second time... she gets to the camp site on a helicopter and brings in tents with air conditioning as well.

Camping Episode would be a pure supertrope, so I say let the amount and quality of examples decide. That said, at least the Garfield and Spongebob examples above should go in Horrible Camping Trip, if they already aren't there (I did some digging in Camping Episode earlier, and I remember seeing a Garfield episode there).

An episode of Project Runway had the contestants go "glam"ping in the woods (in other words, the prissy clothing designer version of camping).

An episode of The Proud Family had the gang go camping in the woods with posh trailers. Only they didn't listen to the experienced campers advice about not setting up camp in a river bed and going to higher ground, which made it turn into a Horrible Camping Trip rather quickly.

An episode of X Men Evolution had the main characters going on a survival weekend camping trip where they competed against The Brotherhood. The X-Men had the option of staying home and doing survival training with Wolverine, and gleefully jumped at the (inevitably less painful) camping option.

Another Arthur example: in "D.W.'s Deer Friend", D.W. suggests the family go camping for the weekend, after D.W. has gotten hooked on the Great Outdoors Channel (GO), and wanted to see wild animals up close.

Live Action TV

The Season Five finale of Sanford And Son has Fred and Lamont camping up in the mountains, which Lamont hopes will bond him and Fred before he gets married and leaves home.

Western Animation

Rockos Modern Life: "Hut-Sut-Raw" pits Rocko, Heffer, and Filburt against nature as they struggle to make it through what they thought would be a peaceful and idealic camping trip.

One episode of Rugrats involved the babies camping in the backyard with Grandpa Lou. Stu isn't camping with them, but he has a million reservations about the kids going camping despite it only being the backyard. Lou tells the babies a ghost story about Sasquatch, which they confuse being about Satchmo, and believe that he's out to get them.

Except that Camping Episode limits the trope needlessly, since it ties it into works that have an episodic format.

So works that aren't episodic in nature, like Three Men in a Boat do not fit with the trope. For all that tropes are flexible, I don't trope names should go out of its way to be more limiting than necessary.

I also think there is a point in having a trope name that is similar to Horrible Camping Trip, to give another hint that one may list one or the other for a given work, not both.

Hey Arnold: In the episode Roughin it Arnold's Grandpa takes Arnold and Gerald on a weekend camping trip. At the site they find Helga, Pheobe and Helga's dad are also roughin it in a high-tech RV. When everyone goes hiking on a mountain trail they get lost in the woods, and Arnold and Gerald have to use the survival skills Arnold's Grandpa taught them to help everyone else find their way back to camp.

It doesn't need to be a supertrope of Horrible Camping Trip either. They're different tropes, but that doesn't make one cover the examples of the other. In this case I think that would just be combining two tropes unnecessarily, and could make the the two pages end up being too similar. Which could cause problems later down the line.

^That's nonsense. This isn't media specific anymore than Christmas Episode is media specific. I.e like the Christmas Episode you could have a Camping Episode that's in a television work, or you can have one that's in a comicbook. The only restriction would be that it's not a constant setting within the work as it would be redundant to include works that always use the setting of a camping trip.

As an example it would be redundant to include Survivor here because the setting is always in the wilderness.

I used media specific as in serialised media here, ie novels, movies, standalone comic books and so on are excluded via the name. Some will be listed, but it's better to pick up a name that doesn't give implications about a specific form of media.

For that matter, even the simple Camping Trip will imply that it's a trip, ie something of limited duration.

^Since other mediums will inevitably be listed, and your suggested name still implies a limited time then you're pretty much making a moot point. It doesn't actually exclude those mediums as similar pages show, because Tropes Are Flexible.

Persona 4: Has the the main cast go on a school camping trip separate from the main game play as a sort of breather story mainly for character growth and gags. In it the girls ending up being Lethal Chefs when they make dinner, and knocking out both Yosuke and the Protagonist when they eat it, Kanji sneaks into the girls tent, and gets knocked out, and the main characters go swimming in the river.

Trope names and descriptions help to shape which examples gets listed, and can thus help to block otherwise worthwhile examples—there is nothing inevitable about this. Also, Episode has a specific meaning here on TV Tropes, implying a part in a serial work, which Trip does not have.

^ There are many pages similar to this that still have examples in all the media you listed earlier. So yes it is inevitable it will still get examples in those medias like the other pages. You seem to basically be assuming Viewers Are Morons will cause a problem for this kind of title when it hasn't been.

And there does not seem to be any set definition of "episode" anywhere on the wiki after doing a search through the articles.

^^^ Yes, it will get some examples. But those examples will be in spite of the name, just as the examples of many other tropes are in spite of their names. Tropes Are Flexible is a great guideline when adding examples, but it's not when deciding on what is Clear Concise Witty in the trope naming process. The trope names shape our expectations and thinking.

having "Episode" in the name implies plot happens. Camping Trip is just "a trip", and can be done, for example, in a Beach Episode without actually playing any role in the plot.

say, by the characters setting up camp in the nearby woods... and then going back to the beach for some volleyball and then plot happens in the beach, not the camp. (EDIT: actually, this is apparently already implied in xanderiskander Survivor example)

Having a plot is no requirement for a trope. A trope can be a setting, or a character type, or an item. As long as you can associate reasonably fixed plot or characterisation elements to an idea, then it's fair game to me.

Camping Trip or Going Camping both imply lots of things that can be used to hang a plot on, but it's primarily a setting, not a plot:

people doing things on their free time for fun

people trying to connect with each other, by switching environment and doing something together

people choosing to do something which they end up not being capable of, and then having to deal with it

people being miserable, wet, hungry, cranky, and stuck together

people simply being stuck together

as a frame story for meeting new people or see new places

meeting interesting wildlife or other dangers they are ill-equipped for

For what it's worth, I don't think Survivor to fall under this trope, since their situation is pretty far removed from what I think of as camping, and the situation can hardly be viewed as a vacation.

doesn't prove anything actually, because your right, but it gives you an idea of why having "episode" over "trip" is better. yes, it's a setting where plot happens; no, it's not the act of "going camping".

I think you do have a narrow definition of creative fiction. I do know about plotless short stories, several of them, and they're not Dada (some examples: Uncleftish Beholding by Poul Anderson, Buscard's Murrain by China Mieville, and The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien).

If we must. Camping Story Arc would be better since it implies more of a limited time frame. I still maintain that Kjnoren is being Literal Minded about all this though, and I see no reason to change the name at the moment when only one vocal person here in this discussion has a problem with it.

sounds okay at first, but you'll notice that the fact that they go camping doesn't actually do anything in the story, they literally are just "going camping often" like how Evulz is just sitting on his chair, we don't really know how the camping turns out or how Evulz sits on his chair. so in other words, these "tropes" don't even count as Narrative Filigree as they don't add any depth or interesting details in the narrative.

An episode of Eureka has the men all go on a camping trip. This being Eureka, there are tents with AIs, gadgets to start fires, and they wind up being chased by a robotic spider. All in all, an average day in Eureka.

Torchwood's Season 1 episode "Countrycide" is most definitely an episode of the Horrible Camping Trip variety. The team goes on a mission out in the middle of nowhere and camps out. Starts out light enough with some UST between a few couples and a who's-kissed-who campfire game. Then they find the cannibals and it all goes dark from there.

Silver Spoons: Ricky and his father & grandfather all go hunting (which is essentially "camping but with guns") as a bonding experience. Ricky enjoys it until he has to shoot a deer. Even after that, he says that he liked all the rest of it and that is what he'll remember. It is the first time we see the father & grandfather get along and enjoy each other's company.

Correction about the Brady Bunch episode. There were actually two, not counting the UFO episode. The episode with the bear shadow was an early one (S 1 E 8 - A Camping We Will Go) where the girls had little camping experience, and the boys essentially made fun of them. The bear trick was revenge.
When camping in the Grand Canyon in Season 3, Bobby and Cindy got lost in the canyon; they were found by a resident Native American boy they befriended.

Cheers The guys take Frasier camping and end up stranding him during a Snipe Hunt. We don't see the trip, we just see them leaving from the bar and then returning to the bar while Frasier is stuck out in the woods.

"They gave you two reasons why. 1) Camping Episode makes more sense because all the examples fit episodic works that wouldn't otherwise feature camping. 2) They don't like Camping Trip because it sounds like People Sit on Chairs. "

eh... Camping or Camping Trip is a verb, just like Sitting. if you must insist on this being a setting. a name that actually makes it seem like a setting would help your case. like Plotty Campsite if you wanna go in-your-face.

The act of traveling to the camping plot is a part of the overall camping trip, so the correct answer is both. "Plot" can refer to a location or a narrative sequence. "Trip" can only be mistaken for parts of the whole. Which is a logical fallacy.

Camping Trip is a narrative sequence that is part of a setting that designates certain tropes will frequently be encountered. Such a list of tropes should be indexed under Camping Tropes.

Most of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows takes place while Harry and his friends are on the run from the Death Eaters and the Ministry of Magic. They're usually out in the woods, but they make specific trips back to London, Diagon Alley, and Godfrey's Hollow, before going back to Hogwarts to find the Elder Wand and the final confrontation.

Stab at a revised description. Note that I still think this should have the trope name Camping Trip, for maximum inclusivity of the event:

Laconic: Spending time outdoors for recreation purposes

Spending time outdoors, walking, breathing fresh air, making food on a portable stove, sleeping under the sky—all in order to relax or having fun. Camping is interpreted widely here. Sleeping outdoors definitely counts, even in a garden, but a full-day hike also qualifies, especially if one prepares food and cooks outdoors. Tents aren't required either, boats can also qualify, or going to austere cabins.

In fiction, it can be used to provide an easy change of tempo or environment, and it also gives a strong backdrop for interpersonal dynamics, as the characters have to work together more closely in an often unfamiliar way. The goal of the characters to have fun or relax also makes it easy to set up and knock down expectations.

If sleeping outdoor is all that is requird of this trope, it becomes absurdly broad, covering just about every work.

Camping carries a meaning, and part of that meaning is recreation - of doing things for fun and because one wishes to do it. It's mentioned explicitly in the current description, and was heavily implied in the former one, which mentioned vacations in its first sentence.

While I agree with the sentiment behind Tropes Are Flexible, I'd say YKTTW is a partial exception to that. Here we are creating a snapshot of how the trope is used right now (and partially in past time), but not in how it might evolve later on. (If one wanted to say Tropes Are Mutable, it would be closer to how I view things.)

I view tropes as concepts. In this case, the core concept is camping, which implies the combination of outdoor living and recreation. Here, the trope is very much not flexible, though what is considered recreation and outdoor living can be. Everything else here can and should be tossed by the wayside: requiring a specific genre or media, making requirements on what people move about in, and so on.

Last, I think referring to Tropes Are Flexible during YKTTW is disingeneous, and implies a failure in determining the best possible trope as of the time of writing. The primary goal is to identify the core concept of the trope, and give it a good name that (a) fits the concept, (b) does not limit the concept in any unduly way. Which is how I interpret "concise" in Clear Concise Witty.

"Flexible" isn't mutable. They're two different things. Tropes are flexible, and they are also mutable. A few centuries ago, spending the weekend in a tent and cooking your own food wasn't considered "camping", it was considered how you lived in middle North America. Then there's the changes that cabins and Recreational Vehicles have brought to the concept. That is mutability.

Flexibility is the number of different ways of using the same tropes.

"Camping" by staying the night in a haunted house. You're not "outside", but you take sleeping pouches, cook food on a portable, and jump at noises.

"Camping" by waiting in line overnight (or for weeks) for the new X, or a convention. Again, you bring sleeping pouches and cook food on a portable. Or send someone else to fetch supplies since you're so close to a 7-Eleven, but you can't leave your spot.

"Camping" by sleeping in a tent that is effectively the size of a small house, complete with kitchenette, waiting for the "Big Game" to start.

These are all activities that people call "camping", and none of them have recreation as the goal of the activity. One is proving bravery, and two are proving loyalty. Adding a group of people chasing the campers doesn't take away from what those campers are doing, especially when the audience calls the activities a camping trip, too. Duties like "fetching firewood", "start cooking", "set up the tent", "break down the campsite", "hearing things" are all activites that are done for this.

A Wall Of Text isn't suited for a description. Covering every permutation of possible activites is suited for analysis/ or subtropes, if it is even suited for this wiki at all. But your current interpretation of the trope seems limited to vacationing in temperate forests. But that limitation isn't present in everyone's perspective.

^^ Concise: giving a lot of information clearly and in a few words; brief but comprehensive. Clear implies understandable and unambigious.

Every single draft of this trope has included vacation or recreation as key words. Talking about "camping" on how life looked in central North American a few hundred years ago might be true on how the word was used then, but certainly isn't true in how the word is used now. "Vacatioing in temperate forests" is your interpretation of my view, which isn't my view. My view is described in the current description.

^ Viewing the history, I think a lot of the examples have been truncated from the original drafts, for some reason. Beats me why it happened - uncareful editing?

Camping definitely had a different meaning 200 years ago. The modern use of the word "camping" goes back to no more than a hundred years or so ago. The root word "camp" is far older, of course, but had different meanings (and also apparently fell in and out of use at times).

Now, the concept of spending time outdoor under relative austerity for leisure is older than that. The French court had a period in the 18th century (I think) with "shepherding" outings, but I think they were rather big affairs with servants, and I'm not sure they spent the night outdoors as well. Given that they likely were fed food prepared by others too, that's probably outside this trope (except possibly as a historical curiosity).

Modern-day camping requires one thing: a relatively large group of people who lives in cities and have a decent amount of time (and money) for leisure.

Please, take your time and read what I write, instead of trying to put your own preconceptions on what I write first.

^ The camping in Harry Potter is incidental and merely mentioned at best, as an extension of their journey to find and destroy the Horcruxes, and their being on the run from Voldemort's Deatheaters. The places they travel to, the hardships they face, and the people they meet are the focus in the book not the camping.

i know i'm being redundant because that has been established waaaaay up there in the discussion. but the current examples and the proposed ones don't really reflect that. they're all "hijinks ensue during a camping trip" or at worst "someone goes camping offscreen" rather than "a camping trip is used to bring characters together".

Correct, I view the trope as a backdrop. Yeah, the examples needs to be curated and maintained, and I've been calling out poor examples lots of times already. You're preaching to the choir in the case of me about that.

I've fixed the examples, leaving out those that obviously belonged to Horrible Camping Trip. Took a while.

Now, given that everyone seems to agree that the current description is great, and that it doesn't mention "episodes" once, and we have a few examples showing that the trope does not require an episodic format, why not simply go with Camping Trip for the name and the laconic "Spending time outdoors for recreation purposes" as I've proposed earlier.

Better idea, why not have a crowner? And I'm not seeing any overwhelming agreement about the description. I think it's fine but for a distinct lack of reference to the very common one-off pre-packaged plot in a can, "the characters go camping for an episode" trope. To me, People go camping sounds like "people live in houses," "people eat at resturaunts," "men on a boat" as a setting does not a trope make.

^^ I see a distinct lack of different proposals for the description, even less pointers on how it is to be changed. Cave Cat picked up my draft description without any changes, and everyone who has said anything has said it was an improvement over the old one.

Please, note the second clause in the first sentence of the description: all in order to relax or having fun (though bonding or building character could also be included). There is an expressed intent behind what the characters do. Compare also the information carried between the phrases "I went camping yesterday" and "I was back home yesterday".

The reason I go on here is that there is nothing tying "camping" to the episodic format, which is what Camping Episode implies. Ie, Camping Episode will as a trope name limit the trope to a specific form of media: those with episodic formats. I view that as a form of Fan Myopia, which will shape the sort of examples that get added and thus be self-reinforcing.

The description should say that if the setting is always in a camping setting it doesn't count. That wouldn't be a backdrop to grow the characters let them have fun, have them bond etc which is the whole point of putting them in that new setting in the first place.

The reason episode works well in the title is that it makes it clearer that the camping setting is unusual for the work, and is usually separated from the main plot. A work with it's characters always at camp would be a whole different trope on it's own. That would be Super Trope to this in fact.

We should also exclude works where the whole story is about being Marooned In The Wilderness because that has a page of it's own as well.

And again nothing limits "episode" to only applying to specific works. It only limits it to works where camping isn't the primary setting. We have similar pages and it's never been misused that way on the wiki to date. People are smart enough to discern where it applies. It would still apply to smaller stories within a book. Single issues in a comic. Sequel movies that take the same characters and put them in a camping setting. Or what have you. So I don't really see a reason to change it. But if you have a better word than "trip" or "episode" then suggest one and we can discuss it. Or make a crowner and we can vote on the name.

Why limit the trope needlessly, by mixing together a specific setting with a relation to the larger work? And which relation to the larger work is it you're after? We already have several tropes that describe the relations between a part of a work (episode) with the larger work (series), like Breather Episode, Filler, Standalone Episode, and so on.

You yourself admit that the natural supertrope to "an episode camping" is "a work with camping", so why not go for the supertrope at once? Missing Supertrope is one of the most common troubles here.

Robinsonade (and Picnic Episode, for that matter) should be mentioned in the description, true, but I think the trope descriptions are clear enough that the risk for confusion is minimal.

It's not misuse I'm concerned about in the narrow sense. It is that by making a more narrow trope than is needed, we are needlessly limiting the examples we are gathering. We are also missing out on the history of the trope, because the episode writers are certainly looking at and relating to famous earlier examples no matter which media they appeared in.

As for a good example for why X Episode is damaging, consider Boot Camp Episode (or equivalent). This is exactly what you're after - everything fits nicely. But note that a lot of the really memorable boot camp scenes or descriptions are not there.

^ try that on Beach Episode or Hot Springs Episode. these are basically similar to camping in the sense that it's going outside to bond with others. though then again, these aren't comparable to boot camps. you don't get Training From Hell in beaches (well technically you can, but it's mostly for fanservice)

You yourself admit that the natural supertrope to "an episode camping" is "a work with camping", so why not go for the supertrope at once? Missing Supertrope is one of the most common troubles here.

Because again they have completely different reasons for using that setting for the work. The camping used in a Camping Episode is supposed to be unusual and change the tone of the work to have some variation in the story, and expose the characters to new scenarios. A Super Trope about a work where the characters are always at camp would primarily have the same camping tone throughout, and primarily use scenarios you'd find while camping. That's the thing you don't seem be understanding is that they're two completely different things. One is dipped into sparingly while the other is the genre the work is placed in.

Even people in the Media Specific thread pointed this out to you.

If that's the page that you want to make then make a new YKTTW as a Super Trope to this.

I think it's up to Cave Cat, as the OP, on which direction to go there. But the trouble with your reasoning is that there are several possible reasons for why the script writers decide to do a camping episode, and as such a trope like Camping Episode feels half-arsed, it claims a specific relation with a larger work without specifying the meaning of that relation.

^How is there being several possible reasons a problem? There are many tropes with multiple reasons why it would be used. And as far as I know you don't have to use a trope for every possible reason at the same time. You just have to mention them in the description.

Or do you mean that you think the reasons are unclear? I would have thought we'd discussed plenty of reasons why this is used. And I'd think that exposing characters to new scenarios is plenty meaningful on it's own. It keeps the story/characters fresh and gives the characters new challenges to face.

And since there are several people who think differently about this trope I think it would be more reasonable to have a crowner on what the description should be about. Since there seems to be a disagreement on what this should be about. We're not going to be able to move forward with this otherwise.

Proposed changed last paragraph of the description:
Camping in a work that doesn't otherwise take place in a outdoors setting exposes the characters to new scenarios and keeps the story fresh for the audience. It's often used as a Filler or a Breather Episode if the creator feels the story has been too similar in earlier stories or as an excuse for the characters to be exposed to new situations where they can bond and grow. Alternatively this can be subverted and the camping can be used as an excuse to move the plot forward.

Grey's Anatomy season 3 episode 'Where The Boys Are' has a sub-plot where Shepherd and Burke try to go camping together and end up taking 2 interns, the chief of surgery, the bartender, and the bartender's partner with them.

xanderiskander wants this to be about camping episodes/arcs/story/whatever.

choosing either will completely change the ykttw to a direction that cannot use the other. because you can't have "the work has an arc or episode that involves camping" on a trope about "the story is set on a camping trip regardless of sit.", as you'd have to word each differently to fit.

Removed a hat, this is far from ready. the fact that we're having a crowner to decide what to do with the description alone is reason enough. don't even get me started on having to rewrite current descriptions and choosing an appropriate name after it.

Now, if we switch name to Camping Trip and the laconic to fit in the YKTTW, we might get a few more examples where the majority of the work is about camping. But I think making a trope related to camping and then excluding the classical work in English literature about it is just stupid.

One thing the current description could stand improvement on is describing some of the activities that are usually connected with camping, and their depiction in fiction. That can also serve to help in writing the examples, to get their quality up.

^The idea to make this trope about any story with an incident of camping has made a lot of people put forward examples that are very chairsy. I hate to think what examples it would get if it were on the wiki in that state. People were putting forward things like them camping in Harry Potter in the Deathly Hollows where camping wasn't relevant to anything in the book. It was just an incidental extension of them being on the run. Next we'll get examples from Pokemon because the characters in the show put up a tent sometimes. Even though the focus and setting aren't even about the camping but about the journey, and the various mons.

Expanding the description to talk about what people do while camping will help somewhat. However it would need to exclude some stories where camping's not relevant to prevent that misuse.

Oh and to the question asked earlier. Goblet of Fire is unfortunately the one book in the Harry Potter series I've never reread. Since I rented it at a library. I don't really know that book as well, and I have no reference point to answer whether the camping at the Quidditch world cup would be a good example or not.

Getting shoehorned or irrelevant examples isn't a problem in and of itself. The problem is getting a large proportion of shoehorned or irrelevant examples. So far, we have had only two of those, both from a hugely popular work (ie Harry Potter).

As for camping during music festivals, sports events, and so on, my first thought was to disallow those, but I wasn't happy with that position. I think such examples can be allowed if the camping activities are important in the story, or if camping is considered a necessary activity for the proper "festival" experience, not simply the least-cost alternative.

I didn't read through each and every posting, but my humble opinion is that if people think that this isn't a broad enough trope because it applies to episodes, then another trope needs to be made.

The point of a single episode about camping is that it breaks up the story. They usually do not go camping ever again. It's doesn't work in a long work because we are usually unaware of their habitual activities. Another trope needs to be made to address general camping plots.

I'm hatting this because the suggestions given to change it are simply another trope. They can be related to each other. No need to pack all our tropes in one suitcase. :)

Trouble is, not every camping episode is there to break up the of the story. In zero-continuity series, the camping episode has no plot to break up. In other cases, the camping episode is part of the overall plot. And in some cases the camping isn't done in an episode (and I note that the laconic says "go camping for one episode" - should two-parters be excluded as well?).

The most important part of this is that it is really different from what usually happens. If the trip spills over into a part two, I'm sure that exception is just fine. Not the end of the world. As long as the plot of the episodes are directly connected. I believe the central point is that this is a one, maybe two time thing that doesn't happen too much.

Also, the main criteria for this trope should be that the trip is a vast difference in scenery from the usual setting.
How that works in a movie where you don't know what the people do on a daily basis is hard to say, unless it is specifically said that they don't do anything and camping is foreign to them. Now that would fit in.

^ But you said you think another trope about more general camping stories should be split from this. So what would the other trope be called if we called this "The Camping Trip" then? Camping Trip is already a much broader phrase as it is.

^ Because just " work involves camping" is People Sit On Chairs. And it's not simpler for the trope, because you're shoehorning two completely different ways of using camping in fiction into one space, and it's forcing the trope to try be too many things at once.

We're beating a dead horse at this point. The camping is used for different purposes in both instances, this has been explained to you numerous times already.

I flat out disagree that "work involves camping" would be People Sit On Chairs. When an activity has other activities connected to it and can be used for the entire plot of a work (be it an episode or not), then it's about as far from People Sit On Chairs as it can possibly be.

There are several different ways of using camping in fiction, but that's why I think we first should focus on the form, and include every single work that manages to fit the form. And if you want to use a specific function that camping is supposed to fill in a larger story, then that function should be placed front and center in the trope name and the description.

To me, Camping Episode is both too narrow and too wide. Too narrow, since its name in and of itself excludes works that are predominantly about a camping trip (like Three Men In A Boat or Moonrise Kingdom), too wide since it doesn't say anything about the role the camping trip is supposed to play in the story or the episode. (And please don't drag out Tropes Are Flexible—yes, it's true, but trope names also shape the way we think about them, and thus shapes the very examples that are collected.)

Last, camping stories are an old tradition, with associated tropes, of which Horrible Camping Trip, Ghost Story, and Lots Of Luggage have been mentioned so far. By focusing on the form, the trope can document the entire storytelling tradition that's around this, not simply parts of it.

I have been making my proposal for how a Camping Trip trope should look like—name, description, and laconic. But I have seen no good full-fledged alternative from someone else on everything yet.

When an activity has other activities connected to it and can be used for the entire plot of a work (be it an episode or not), then it's about as far from People Sit on Chairs as it can possibly be.

But not if the camping is merely incidental to the story. The only other examples you've given where the whole work has people camping and has a conflict without it being a Horrible Camping Trip don't even involve camping activities as the focus. Two of them are about people Being on the run, and Without A Paddle is about people searching for buried treasure. So when pretty much all it takes is for someone to set up a tent for it to apply forgive me if I don't see where you're getting meaning out of the camping.

There are several different ways of using camping in fiction, but that's why I think we first should focus on the form, and include every single work that manages to fit the form.

And again that's something completely different from what this trope is. This isn't meant to cover every kind of camping story. If that's how you feel go make that trope instead of trying to force it onto this one.

As an aside this is nowhere near ready. People shouldn't be adding more hats.

I'm certain there is a valid trope here, but the arguments have gone around in circles so many times I'm completely lost.

—

The main cast packing up to go camping and have an adventure; sometimes due to it being disastrous, like in most sitcoms, sometimes due to camping on top of the sacred burial mound like in horror films, sometimes due to setting up camp just where the smugglers are operating like in The Famous Five and other children's lit, or sometimes just being heartwarming trips of family reconciliation like in Hallmark Movies.

Tents, campfires, it being something that is not the character's normal life, that all seems tropeable. Non-tropeable would be nomads, wilderness men, traveller-lifestyles, border guards in fantasy works, wood elf camps, etc aren't really a camping episode because that is the character's normal life.

Non-tropeable, being on the run, just being incidental to the plot (for example in ''Atlantis there is often a campfire scene simply because they have to trek through the wilderness to get where-ever the adventure of the week will happen), that is just a scene which happens to be set in a camp/tent and is People Sit On Chairs. I'd say that cabins in the wood and RVs (and maybe magical palaces enclosed in TARDIS-esque tents) probably oughtn't to count either (although horse drawn caravans might). It just doesn't carry the connotation of roughing it in the woods, moors, desert or seaside (or whatever).

As for the "episode" part, it should be either part of an ongoing series. One-off works about someone going camping are not camping episode, they are works that happen to use camping as the plot device. For ongoing series it ought to be the focus off, or at least the major part of, that episode.

—

That is what a camping episode implies to me. If it said in the tvguide or book review pages "tonight/this book is a camping episode where X... etc", that is what it would bring to my mind.

^ Very much agree. But I also believe that there is very little difference between a movie like The Great Outdoors or an episode going camping in a random comedy series. Both are drawing on the same roots and are using the same trope elements.

That's why I think calling this Camping Episode is limiting the way we think of the trope.

Is the movie part of a series? If it isn't then it isn't a camping episode. I don't see that as "limiting" the trope as much as "defining" it.

It may be a movie that uses other camping tropes (campfire scene, finding a cave, squabbling with the teenager who prefers their xbox, roasting marshmelons, the grizzly bear attack...I have never seen this movie nor done much camping myself, does it show?), but the one trope it doesn't use, if it is a standalone movie, is the episode one.

There are lots of tropes involved in characters going camping, this is just one of them. Its the episodic media one.

No, Camping Episode is the trope—as in the concept of camping with all that you mention—applied to a specific set (that of episodic works). Think of episodic works as a type of media, and you're not far off.

Xanderiskander wants to make a trope about the role of the Camping Trip within a larger story. I have nothing against that, but then I think the trope name should reflect the role within the story.

I've actually mentioned earlier that if there's a series of movies and a sequel involves the characters going camping that it should count as a Camping Episode like Cryptic Mirror is saying. He gets the point.

^^ The equivalent to People Sit On Chairs would be People Walk. Both Cryptic Mirror and myself has provided oodles of events that are connected with camping, and can be expected from camping in stories by readers and watchers.

^ Personally, I think Camping Trip is better than The Camping Trip, but I'm not hung up about it. I also believed we had a policy to be careful with starting tropes with The, but I might be misremembering.

^^ I really don't see any difference by adding a "The" at the beginning to be honest. Whether you add one or not the current title is still clearer on the aspect that the camping is used in works that don't normally use camping as a setting.

^ Yes, there is a difference between taking a few characters we haven't encountered before and putting them into the woods, with taking a few characters that we have encountered before and putting them into the woods. But I don't think it's a difference that matters.

If we take the word "camping" as the key word of the trope, then we have a set of activities and events connected with the trope. Wildlife encounters, a nighttime Ghost Story, trouble raising the tent, and sleeping outdoors are but a few examples. All these can be expected to be part of a camping story, no matter if it's in book form, a movie, is a part of an existing story line, is a part outside an existing story line, or is part of a series with Negative Continuity.

They all pick up a common set of elements, mix them up, use those that fits, and occasionally tosses something new into the pot.

Yes, there are several examples of X Episode tropes, so there is a precedent for Camping Episode. But I think it's a bad precedent, a precedent that should be changed.

But I think the damaging nature of the X Episode pattern appears with the following tropes:

Road Trip Episode has the counterparts Road Movie and Wanderlust Song. Road Movie lists some examples from literature, but they're very few, and several of them has not been filmed. But all three tropes take the concept of a Road Trip and applies them to different media—so instead of one Road Trip trope we have three media-specific ones. That means the three tropes have to talk about the difference between them, instead of the similarities between them.

Another similar case can be made for Courtroom Episode and Law Procedural. The dramatic pattern of these is pretty much the same, and creators borrow back and forth between the two "tropes". The split we make between them there on TV Tropes is purely arbitrary as far as the fittings of the trope is concerned—you have objections, pleadings, questioning of witnesses, sudden reveals, and so on in both. Here, Law Procedural is distinctly underdeveloped.

Xanderiskander wants to focus on some specific form of camping story, or a specific relation to the larger work. That's fine, but then the trope name should put focus on the form, or the relation with the larger work. Then Camping Episode is too general a name.

It looks like you are going fishing here for a precedent to pitch a Law Procedural - Courtroom Episode merge to the TRS, and hoping to custom build this trope to get one. Perhaps even trying to build a precedent for merging a lot of the "episode" tropes, given your statement of "But I think it's a bad precedent, a precedent that should be changed." I think, in the nicest possible way, that you have a Single Issue Wonk regarding this and it is getting in the way of recognising this trope.

I'm sorry, but there is a difference between an episodic work and a one off when it comes to tropes. A camping episode will always be different to the viewer than a movie which happens to be about camping.

There might be a lot of overlap, but overlap is nothing new with tropes. Remember, a trope is just a packet of information that resonates with the consumers of a work. The camping episode info-packet rings the bell about characters from an ongoing series camping differently from a stand-alone work about or just glancingly which uses camping as its canvas. One is a plot device, the other isn't.

Looking back over the thread it also seems we've got clear consensus that it is The Camping Episode with overwhelming support and one holdout on the Lumper side of the Lumper Vs Splitter debate who wants to use this as a precedent to merge existing tropes later. They are never going to be convinced by any argument, and their protests are not convincing anyone else.

No, I'm not pitching for sending lots of tropes over to TRS—a lot of them are well established and I see no reason to send things over just because (the backlog is bad enough as is, and there are lots more urgent stuff). I just want to change the precedent, and make tropers question if a given trope is media-specific or makes unwarranted assumptions in its name to start with.

I have absolutely nothing against a trope like Bottle Episode or Lower Deck Episode, since they require being part of a larger whole. But I think lots of the other tropes under Episodes are named for historical reasons and then out of habit.

You say that a camping episode will always be different to the viewer than a movie. What exactly is that difference? And is that difference valid for all types of episodic works (ie those where the camping is part of the main storyline, those where camping is beside the main storyline, and Negative Continuity works)?

No. Read the thread yourself. It isn't like you are going to accept the difference no matter what is written, so I shall leave the re-reading and education as an exercise for yourself on your own private time.

Surprisingly after checking the examples it does seem like we do have enough examples that all fit with the Consensus on Camping Episode. There are more people that agree with Camping Episode as a name than not, and it has five hats.

Since kjnoren seems to be assuming people won't get the trope and will exclude examples from other media from the page (which is not true given how other pages are treated) I guess we could add a paragraph in the description to clarify that as a sort of compromise. Although I personally think people are smart enough to discern it and I don't think that's necessary.

A Camping Episode is used to keep the story and the characters fresh by changing the circumstances for the characters, and having an excuse for them to grow. Other types of isolated stories within a work like single issues in a comic or a movie sequel that has the characters leave their usual setting to go camping would also be Camping Episodes. Because of the nature of this trope you'll generally only see a work use a Camping Episode once or twice.

Ok, this thread is going in circles. We need to get some stuff sorted out. Namely the name. That means we need to stop being dismissive to one another.

</Mod Hat>

I've now read through 160 posts. I haven't seen any good explanation as to how an episode where people go camping is different than a work set around camping. The same plot hijinxs seem to occur either way. The whole work is just more condensed.

Even the change of tempo thing is present in the whole works because it's generally the characters looking for a change of tempo from their normal lives outside camping.

Please lay out your arguments. Don't just say you gave them. If they're in the thread they should be easy enough to copy paste.

Makes one Super Trope covering every form of camping trip that can be used to later split off specific forms and variants of camping trips as needed (we already have the most common one, the Horrible Camping Trip). The name makes no assumptions on the form of media or type of story in which the trope appears. The risk for shoehorned examples is thus minimised, since the concept is kept simple and easily understandable.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy